


Witness

by TheArchaeologist



Category: BBC Ghosts, Ghosts (TV)
Genre: A brief history of Britain, Angst, Blood, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feels, Gen, Graphic Description, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Infant Death, Isolation, Loneliness, Look I like history, Romance, don't blame me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-21 16:54:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18706444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArchaeologist/pseuds/TheArchaeologist
Summary: In the space between his death and the arrival of others like him, there is a painfully long time to for him to just sit and watch, tied to the land he once knew.





	Witness

The thing is, he is well and truly acquainted with death.

It was simply the world he lives in. If you want to survive, you had to learn to hunt, to kill, to defend yourself and your family. You had to know when to trust the strangers who stumble onto your lands, and when you should fire an arrow between their eyes without a thought of remorse. It was as natural as ice melting into water, or seeds becoming flowers.

Survival is a fickle thing, however.

Father died before he had even reached the age of manhood, going down with the hyenas that stalked the land with their cackles. His mother had made him help bury the body, but there had not been much left for them to mourn. The sight would have been enough to turn any poor boy’s stomach, but she had always been a strict woman and he had managed to collect himself before he lost their hard-earned rations.

Unknown to her, he swiped a small fragment of rib that remained, one of the higher ones that sat nearer the top of the chest and barely the length of his finger. He perforated the centre, tying a piece of honeysuckle rope through and wearing it around his wrist, hidden away under his furs.

His mother died after the wound on her arm became full of pus, the fever breaking her skin into sweat until she eventually passed in the early hours of the morning, just before daybreak. He buried her, curled up on her side, in the spot where a grand tree used to stand. When he was little, his mother used to tell him stories of her and her brother and how they would play on the tree.

His father was not buried here, his mother had chosen the spot where they first met for him. But a flood made access there near impossible now, so he chose this place instead.

She had been whole when she died, meaning he could not carry her with him. To make up for it, he kept the carving she had possessed since he was tiny, an almost delicate thing made from a slice of ivory and depicting the head of a horse. This he held in the pouch on the belt around his waist.

After that, is was their group elder, a man who had lived to see thirty-nine seasons. His death was cause for celebration, a feast of remembrance, and they campfires had burned deep into the night.

Then it was his wife’s sister, and then his uncle, and then his child.

The child, a girl, was not like her older siblings. She had been near blue at birth and had struggled for hours before eventually succumbing. He had taken his son with him to the spot where his mother lay, and they tucked the infant within an arm’s reach of her.

She, too, had been whole, so he added the small deer figurine he had been carving for her to play with into his pouch. She would forever remain their fawn.

It was inevitable that eventually, he would die as well.

The thoughts of life after death were a mixed, confusing string of tales that were altered and changed and personalised depending on what grouping you asked. For them, it was always just an other, something beyond this span of life where the birds flew, the prey grazed, and the world remained in a constant spring.

Apparently, they had got this wrong.

Watching a wolf gnaw at your intestines is one thing, watching your daughter, nearing the age of maturity, find said wolf and kill it out of grief is entirely another.

His son kept his knapping tools. A bit unsentimental, but from the way he rolled them over in his hands, he found it hard to complain. His daughter kept a piece of twine she liked to braid his hair with when he was feeling generous, plaiting a stand of her own locks and wrapping it around the end. 

His wife opened his pouch, leaving his mother’s carving and his fawn’s toy, and selecting the piece of flint that he had always used then drawing on bone. It is a thin thing, far too small to be anything useful, but it had sat under his fingers just right as he scratched away by the fire.

She placed something inside as well, three tiny cuttings of hair wound together to form a very small circle, one that he could, if he wanted, have resting around his little finger.

He keeps it in the pouch, though, for safekeeping.

Years drift by, and he floats. 

His son grows to become a man, eventually coupling with a woman from another group and leaving to join her family elsewhere. His daughter also couples, but dies in childbirth, the infant leaving with her. His wife and his daughter’s husband bury them by them where the old tree stood, and he waits for days to see if they will join him, but they do not.

He had given his daughter privacy during the birth, and he wonders if he had somehow missed her because of it.

When his wife goes, he is not there either, because she leaves in the middle of the night and he had been sitting with their watchers, gazing out at their forest and listening to the wildlife. No news is sent on to his son, so he is not there when they discuss her burial. It is his daughter’s husband who explains the tree, and they dutifully lay her there, though they disturb one of his mother’s legs in the process.

He appreciates the care they take in trying to put her leg back into position, even if it is not entirely correct.

It is after this that he realises he cannot leave this land.

He had been trying to find his son, who had left for the west, but he can only go so far before he is reaching a barrier, an invisible force that locks him to his home.

Like this he remains, stuck and alone.

Another generation comes and goes, and by now he knows his son must be dead, either through natural causes or the inability to escape the creatures of the land forever.

Things change, and ice and snow arrive.

His group struggles, and children are born who never know anything else, but eventually this passes as well, and the feelings of spring and summer return. With it come new changes, new ideas, and soon gone are the days of scavenge, hunt, and forage. 

Those who live on his old land, now so far from his time that he cannot consider them his group any longer, begin to clear the trees, planting into the earth and scaring away all critters which might seek the easy grazing.

They begin to build things, as well. Strange things, large things, things made of large sarsen rock wedged upright into the ground, and of earth and ditches. People come from far off, bringing beads and jade and livestock, and then later they bring shiny, hard stone that they melt and use to force weaponry.

Through all of this, he remains isolated. 

Those who die do not wish to stay with him, even if he is present in their final moments. As more and more years turn, they become increasingly distressed at the sight of him, at his clothing that no longer fits and his hair that he does not die with limestone. As the ache within him increases, he stops trying to be there in those moments, allowing those deceased not to be frightened in their moments of intimate weakness.

Then, the invasion comes.

The people of his land fear it, and when the men arrive with their strange gods and shields of red, they only hold out from sunrise to midday. Houses get erected, and unlike the rounds ones of before these are shaped square. Some are of timbre, but some are of stone.

These new strangers speak languages he cannot understand, however he does pick up that these stone buildings are their places of worship, where they pray, and drink, and slice open the throats of lambs and bulls.

He watches them pour their alcohol onto the ground and ponders the waste.

As with everyone who occupies his home, it is only a matter of time before they are fading as well, becoming lost in the annuals of history as their culture changes again. It is strange, how they do not even notice, how they do not savour their final days as one thing before they become something else.

It is around this point that he stops paying full attention. 

Watching the living, while entertaining, is also painful, and by now the taste of longing to join his wife, his son, and his daughters is growing into an overpowering flavour. The sense of unfairness is bitter, and he seeks the quieter parts of his land, seeks the areas where he knows they are buried.

He is thankful that their rest has yet to be disturbed.

When the next invasion strikes, it is powerful and violent.

It startles him, when he decides to wander back towards the growing settlement, and finds it run to the ground.  
Gatherings speaking yet another new language comb the destruction for spoils, and they ride off on horseback, the name of ‘William’ on their lips.

He tries to keep up this time, because he has a feeling these new people are important, but before long everyone on his land is returning to the mundane, and he cannot bring himself to fully care on the ins and outs of their odd leadership by people who do not live with them, and the squabbles these distant rulers have. 

Sometimes these squabbles escalate, and the men of the settlement vanish. Not all of them return.

Then, suddenly and without warning, he has a companion.

He has a _lot_ of companions.

He stares at them, and they all stare back, gathered together deep down a partly filled hole. They have markings across their faces, signs of the sickness that is spreading faster than he has ever seen, and there is a glassiness to their eyes.

The attempt to say hello does not go well, because they all mutter amongst themselves before one of them steps forward.

They say something, in the latest tongue to be adopted, drawing it out slow and steady as if that will be of help to him.

After several days, both sides take to miming.

They show him, in an exaggerated way, becoming ill and dying in their beds. He shows them, in an attempt that takes several tries, the wolf which took his life. They all eventually catch on, talking over the top of one another, and then start pointing at things and saying words over and over.

This joyous moment of human interaction does not last long, because only a week later, others arrive to fill in the hole, and they vanish under a mound of dirt.

He cannot mourn them, nor can he help them out, so instead he practices their words, and tries to pay attention to the living so he can learn more. 

He gains his next companion hundreds of years on, in the form of a woman, who was tied up in the middle of her village and burned alive. She screams, and she cries, and he shouts at the cruelty of it all, but when she mercifully passes, she stumbles off the fire and straight into his arms.

He offers her comfort as she sobs, and in return she does not scream when she looks at him.

She is the one who gives him a name. She says, in an awkward, mimed fashion because he is not fluent in her language and the one he had been trying has long since died, that when she sees him, she thinks of a robin, because they are tough and feisty and territorial. She calls herself ‘Mary’, which he struggles to pronounce, but she is patient with him.

In the years following her death, the land is unceremoniously cleared, the settlements removed, the people chased off, and a great house is dumped right on top of his buried friends.

He finds them in something called ‘the basement’, and they all cheer when he enters. 

After that, companions start springing up thick and fast. 

Well, they do to him, anyway, but Mary insists that there are huge gaps in-between each arrival. 

He finds them confusing, and loud, and they talk of things he struggles to follow, but they are not nasty, either. They remind him of his children, when they reached the age where they were not children any longer, and how they would argue, and weep, and snap very easily at their group.

He never takes his hair lock ring out anymore, in fear of losing such a valuable gift.

The one called ‘Thomas’ insists he sits and listens to his stories, which he calls ‘poetry’, so he can develop an, “eloquent form of speech’. ‘Fanny’ agrees, but it is too flouncy for his tastes, and his stories are not like those tales told around the fire. When the man who demands to be called ‘Captain’ arrives, he defends his right to speak however he wants.

He also says something about ‘lesser species’ and ‘apes’, but he does not hold that against him.

‘Julian’ takes to him. He does not understand how and why it happened, but he enjoyed it for what it is worth. They take to spending long evenings playing ‘chess’, which has taken him centuries to grasp, and if he is in a good mood will let him backtrack when he makes a mistake.

‘Pat’ would never have made it in his time. He is too kind, to willing to go the peaceful route, and reminds him of a duckling waddling around and looking for its mother. This is not a bad thing, however, and they spend a lot of time talking. Pat always listens when he speaks, even if he does not always have the words he needs. 

When they realise that the life of the house’s current occupier is drawing into her final days, his companions grow quiet and the house grows dark. Even his friends in the basement do not hold their usual friendliness.

The women ask how each other are, and ‘Kitty’ seeks comfort from an obviously disgruntled Fanny, who pats her on the back and tried to discuss the unwavering nature of death. When they spot him watching from the doorway, Fanny politely asks how he deals with it after all this time.

The thing is, he is well and truly acquainted with death.

“You accept.” He says, squatting down in front of the burning fireplace. “You be there when they pass. If they stay, then they stay. If not, no worries, they go to better place.”

“But it hurts.” Kitty says, fiddling with a ‘handkerchief’ that she has produced from somewhere. “I don’t want her to go, I like her.”

“And there will be new people to like as well.” He shrugs. “There always is. People always die, we cannot change it, but we can be there for them, when they need it.”

“That is surprisingly insightful.” Fanny praises and pats him on the shoulder. “Well done.”

He shrugs again. “It ok. I stole it from radio few weeks ago.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, hello, I have lots of feelings for one (1) caveman.
> 
> I image Robin to be from around the Upper Palaeolithic kind of era, meaning that, yes, I am correct in writing hyenas running around in Britain. It also means that Robin spent thousands of years alone before he was ever joined by anyone, which hurts me a lot.


End file.
